Paul uses NSA suit to boost campaign

Some observers call the move a somewhat gimmicky gambit on a serious subject. | AP Photo

On the Democratic side, online efforts are gearing up around Hillary Clinton: her 2008 presidential campaign’s email list is being rented to the super PAC Ready for Hillary, which is urging a presidential run from the former secretary of state.

By directly linking his name to an issue, Paul is tapping into what could prove a particularly passionate group of supporters. He’s far from the first candidate to campaign and fundraise off a particular policy issue — Republicans take that approach to Obamacare all the time; some Democrats did the same to the war in Iraq or the so-called “war on women” — but by launching a lawsuit coupled with an aggressive media campaign, Paul is upping the ante.

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“Branding matters with these things,” said Zac Moffatt, who directed digital strategy for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. “If he says ‘Rand Paul 2016,’ he’s finding people who are choosing to sign up for Rand Paul.”

GOP digital strategist Patrick Ruffini said that, of course, other candidates will ramp up their efforts as 2016 nears. Referencing moves by Paul and of Clinton’s supporters, he added that they are “doing what they need to do to put themselves in a position to start in a strong place on Day 1.”

“On the day you announce, you want to have a base of people…You’re going to see people getting more and more aggressive about it,” Ruffini said.

Paul has mounted other fundraising initiatives tied to policy positions on the websites — auditing the Federal Reserve, for example, or Obamacare — but he has pushed this effort in a particularly high-profile way, plugging it during cable news interviews, on social media sites and on the closely watched Sunday shows.

The suit, Paul told POLITICO, will argue that “the NSA program contravenes the Fourth Amendment,” which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures.

“We think the Fourth Amendment doesn’t allow a single warrant to apply to hundreds of millions of people,” Paul said. “We think the Fourth Amendment is pretty clear — a warrant should be specific to the person, the place, the items. We feel very strongly, and I think there’s some indication, that the Supreme Court will expand the breadth of the Fourth Amendment to apply to some of these records [gathered by the NSA].”

The project has been in the making awhile, Paul aides say: he first started a petition protesting NSA tactics several months ago. But when a D.C. judge ruled in December that certain data-collection practices could be unconstitutional, that kicked things up a notch, leading to the announcement of the class-action suit and subsequent prominent advertising of the case.

To pursue his arguments in court, Paul is enlisting the aid of some well-known conservative lawyers, including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who could file a complaint by the end of the month. Court venues in Kentucky, the Washington, D.C. area or an eastern Virginia district are among those under consideration.

Cuccinelli, a tea party favorite who lost a race for Virginia governor last fall, said he was asked to join in December by Doug Stafford, Paul’s former chief of staff who is now executive director of RandPAC, and is focused full-time on Paul’s political apparatus. Cuccinelli said the lawyers are still working on wording the complaint. He added that he hoped the case would be underway in time to affect the reauthorization of elements of the Patriot Act, which Congress will consider in 2015.

“I would say there are two end goals: One is to shine a light on this abuse on the policy side so that reauthorization [of elements of the NSA program] doesn’t happen in 2015, or is dramatically scaled back,” Cuccinelli said. “And two, it is to set the legal precedent that the government doesn’t have the right to come in and gather up all of the citizens’ and non-citizens’ personal information, frankly … That’s the legal goal, to rein in the government from this sort of behavior.”

Paul has said in several interviews that Republicans can make inroads with younger voters by emphasizing privacy rights. Obama won a whopping 60 percent of the youth vote in 2012, but Paul preaches that the GOP can recover in part by tackling privacy issues. The gist of his argument: complex tax code debates, for example, may not move the youth vote dial, but young people have a personal stake in the security of their cell phone.

“Certainly, there’s no secret about it, he believes this issue would resonate with younger people,” the adviser said, adding, “He’s not looking for issues, not saying, ‘Hey, I need to appeal to young people. What should I do?’ It’s the other way around. These are his natural issues, the reasons he wants to be here, the things he wants to talk about. But one of the selling points he’s going to make to other people in his party and elsewhere, is this is an issue young people care about.”

At the same time, the case also puts Paul to the left of Obama on a national security issue, which may not do him favors with the establishment wing of his own party, whose support he will need if he runs for president. Many Republicans have defended the NSA, arguing the agency needs to have the proper tools to prevent terrorist attacks.

Obama, in announcing his proposals to reform surveillance policies, which include restrictions on the collection and storing of telephone metadata, also defended the country’s intelligence apparatus. The president said the men and women working within it have “extraordinarily difficult” jobs.

Paul’s advisers say he will likely step up his public promotion of the lawsuit as a filing date draws closer. The Kentuckian made the initial announcement in a Fox News interview, directing viewers to his Facebook and PAC pages. On Facebook, he has several links to his campaign site sign-up page.

“It’s really smart to identify people who share this point of view,” said Moffatt, the Romney campaign alum. “If you’re going to be a politician and take a stand, you should know who stands with you.”